Early in the year 1773, the Court of Directors, seeing the Company's concerns more and more burthened on every side, and having no means of answering the demands upon them, were compelled to apply to Government for a loan of 1,500,000_l._, for four years. This measure placed them, if possible, more completely than ever in the hands of the Ministry; and the Parliament, for the next four months, was entirely occupied with a series of motions, reports, and petitions, connected with their affairs. The debates of that period, which are very important, belong rather to the history of the East India Company and of the times, than to the Memoirs of Lord Clive. In the line of his politics being decidedly opposed to the measures of the Directors, which he considered as fatal to the prosperity of the Company, and being of opinion that their territorial acquisitions must be held as being acquired for the State, he generally voted with the Minister, but without joining his party. It was in the course of this important session that a desperate blow was aimed at Lord Clive's honour and fortune. India affairs, though not in general very popular, or much attended to, engaged, at that time, a large share of the public attention. Violent discussions were going on in the Court of Proprietors, and in the Court of Directors, which were not only at war with each other, but divided within themselves: the East India Company complained loudly of the Ministry, which did not fail to recriminate; two Parliamentary Committees (the Select Committee, and the Committee of Secresy,) were sitting at the same time on the Company's affairs, and often occupied with nearly the same questions; petitions from the Company, the City of London, and the Proprietors, were daily presented to Parliament on Indian affairs; the events of the preceding fifteen years were reviewed, and brought before the public, by men influenced by every sentiment of public good and personal animosity; and many were violently agitated by all the passions that the love of gain, the fear of ruin, ambition, honour, public spirit, or private malevolence, can put in motion. When, in this general turmoil, the acts of almost every man who had filled any conspicuous situation in India were passed in review, and commented on with all the virulence of party spirit, it is not to be imagined that one who had acted so eminent a part in the events of the East, and who had taken so active a share in those at home, as Lord Clive had done, should escape without reproach. No man, from his situation, had made more enemies; and they were not only powerful and rich, but able and persevering. The combined force of so many passions in angry commotion, and seeking for vent in one direction or another, seemed all at once to be turned against him. It appeared as if he were singled out as the political scape-goat of Indian criminality, to bear the crimes of others as well as his own faults.